{"id":148667,"date":"2025-09-11T10:06:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T10:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/148667\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T10:06:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T10:06:06","slug":"dreams-griner-is-playing-her-best-basketball-of-the-year-says-smesko","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/148667\/","title":{"rendered":"Dream&#8217;s Griner is &#8216;playing her best basketball of the year&#8217;, says Smesko"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Atlanta Dream head coach Karl Smesko said Brittney Griner is &#8220;playing her best basketball of the year&#8221; after she scored 17 off\u00a0the bench against\u00a0the Connecticut Sun.<\/p>\n<p>Rhyne Howard also chipped in 15 as the Dream notched an 88-72 victory over Connecticut\u00a0on Wednesday, pushing Atlanta up to\u00a0second place in the WNBA standings.<\/p>\n<p>With a 30-14 record, Atlanta became only the sixth team ever to reach 30 regular-season wins in franchise history. The Dream can clinch the number two\u00a0playoff seed if the Las Vegas Ace (29-14) fall to the Los Angeles Sparks on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Brionna Jones and Allisha Gray both finished with 13 points, and Nia Coffey added 10 for the Dream.<\/p>\n<p>Howard, meanwhile, hit three of seven attempts from beyond the arc, becoming just the ninth player in league history with at least 100 made 3-pointers in a season.<\/p>\n<p>Griner, who is also second on the WNBA&#8217;s all-time blockers list, now has 2,525 career rebounds in her 12 WNBA seasons, firmly establishing herself among the league&#8217;s best rebounders.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Great work tonight <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/brittneygriner?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">@brittneygriner<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>BG has officially passed Swin Cash for 16th on the All-Time rebounds list with 2,522. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/DoItForTheDream?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">#DoItForTheDream<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/i09IQy0dgs\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/i09IQy0dgs<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Atlanta Dream (@AtlantaDream) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AtlantaDream\/status\/1965965215872237681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">September 11, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Smesko, who was named\u00a0the head coach of the Dream less than a year ago, heaped praise on Griner.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;BG [Brittney Griner] is so well-respected, not just within our team, but throughout the whole WNBA. So, when she speaks, everyone listens,&#8221;\u00a0Smesko said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;She has been doing a great job for us, coming off the bench and being a spark for us right away.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The last couple of games, she has just been outstanding. She is playing her best basketball of the year, which is perfect timing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was nice today. We could put her in and if we needed a basket we could go to her. She has been outstanding all year long as a leader.<\/p>\n<p>With her first rebound against the Sun on Wednesday, Griner moved past Hall of Famer Swin Cash into 16th place on the WNBA&#8217;s all-time rebounding list.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You got to have all the focus on the playoffs, you are going to be on the road at times,&#8221; Griner said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>You are not going to get calls like you did in regular season, so you have to be able to play and stay focused.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, you have to be able to play and stay focused. When things go out of whack, it\u2019s about pulling everyone together and having that one-track mind.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Atlanta Dream head coach Karl Smesko said Brittney Griner is &#8220;playing her best basketball of the year&#8221; after&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[5262,1079,99,5261,92072,434],"class_list":["post-148667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-social","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-sporty","tag-sportytv","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}